Tao of Liberation

Exploring the Ecology of Transformation

Today, humanity stands at an historic crossroads. Deepening poverty and accelerating ecological destruction challenge us to act with wisdom and maturity: How can we move toward a future where meaning, hope, and beauty can truly flourish?

Drawing on insights from economics, psychology, science, and spirituality, The Tao of Liberation seeks wisdom leading to authentic liberation a path toward ever-greater communion, diversity, and creativity for the Earth community. It describes this wisdom using the Chinese word Tao both a way leading to harmony and the unfolding process of the cosmos itself.

Leonardo Boff

Leonardo Boff spent more than thirty years as a Franciscan, including 22 years as a professor at the Franciscan Institute of Petropolis in Rio de Janeiro. Since leaving the Franciscan order and the priesthood in 1992, he has served as professor of ethics at the University of Rio de Janeiro. He has written more than eighty books, including Jesus Christ Liberator, Christianity in a Nutshell, and Francis of Assisi.

Mark Hathaway

Hathaway (South America program coordinator, United Church of Canada) and prolific author and theologian Boff (Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor) offer an exhaustive study of the worlds current economic and ecological sicknesses and present possible ways forward. Inspired by, but by no means limited to, the ancient Tao Te Chings vision of cosmic balance, the authors urge us to attempt to overcome the idea of domination, and even the limitations of material thinking, to be able to understand the world itself as a form of revelation. Whether the world is ready for the purity and intensity of their vision of transformation is another question, but the readers journey to their conclusions promises to be heady. VERDICT An intense and intensely idealistic blueprint for transformation of the worlds economy and soul. Recommended for a general readership.

- Library Journal

The Tao of Liberation is a path-breaking book. It brings together the insights of cosmology, ecology, and spirituality in a fresh and powerful way. With their creative collaboration, Mark Hathaway and Leonardo Boff offer us a remarkable new synthesis which will surely becoming an enduring classic.

- Brian Swimme, Ph.D., Director, Center for the Story of the Universe, California Institute of Integral Studies and author of The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos and co-author of The Universe Story

I love this book. Its inspiration lives up to its ambition - leading the reader through some of the most complex issues of our age (from globalization and the current recession to climate change and loss of species) while illuminating a path forward through religion and spirituality. Having had the great privilege of serving on the Earth Charter Commission with Leonardo Boff, it was not a new idea that our values and our faith have immediate relevance to the current interlocking web of crises in which we find ourselves. Together he and Mark Hathaway have written a transcendent work of eco-liberation and planetary survival.

- Elizabeth May, O.C., Leader, Green Party of Canada

There is no other book that has so carefully identified the new cosmology of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme as a liberating context for a sustainable future. This is a masterful and important work.

- Mary Evelyn Tucker, Ph.D., Co-Director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology, Yale University and author of Worldly Wonder: Religions Enter Their Ecological Phase

Boff and Hathaway give birth to a great marriage between liberation theology and creation spirituality ... I welcome the dimensions of ecology, cosmology and feminist philosophy ... as well as the deep) ecumenism which is so beautifully and apt, invoked in the use of the great Tao Te Ching throughout the text

- Matthew Fox, author, Original Blessing

A monumental contribution toward tackling the global crisis

- David G. Haflman, Advisor to the VVCC Climate Change Programme

A sweeping, comprehensive and poetic manifesto of social and ecological change ... An interspiritual tour de force!